New to this...help me out please.

So after about a 15 years away from the world of aquariums, my daughter recieved a couple of guppies from her teacher's class room tank this year. We got her a little 10 gallon tank, got it set up and cycled, added the guppies and took her to the store to get more fish. While we were there we grabbed a few live plants. I've never kept live plants before, but thought we'd give them a try. I've been utterly amazed at the stability of this 10 gallon tank since the plants have been in there. Admittedly, this tank is probably overstocked, but it consistently test out at 0/0/0. We are still doing 20% water changes weekly, but it just seems to be amazingly stable with virtually no build up of nitrates. I've attached a pic of her tank as it sits now. We may add some more plants later, but its kinda hard to want to mess with it.

This got me interested in planted tanks. I decided to start one of my own. I got a nice little 20 gallon long and decided to go for it. Specs are as follows:

I definately want to start with low tech and I know this will limit my plant selection. I've found a great list of low tech plants in a sticky on this forum. I plant only use the plants on the sticky.

I guess I'm mostly looking for confirmation that this set up will work with these plants and some pointers for aquascaping it to get the most out of it with the plants on the sticky. Any tips and pointers are greatly appreciated.

You will probably have too much light (about 50 micromols of PAR) to do without CO2, so I recommend starting a DIY CO2 system on the 10 gallon tank. It is easy to do, and a single 1 liter bottle would very likely give you plenty of CO2. http://www.plantedtank.net/forums/sh...d.php?t=178503 is how I'm doing it, except my tank is bigger, so I use two 2 liter bottles.

I'm liking what I see so far, the hardscape should look great with plants filled in. For low tech, the light you have should work. The only suggestion I may give is to switch the colormax with something else and raise the light up quite a few inches. Its basically for visual looks, and offers no real PAR for your plants. Since you chose safe-t-sorb and not something like aqua soil, you will still need some ferts, low tech or not. If you could give us a list of a few plants you want to add, we can give further advice.

Hoppy- you think that is too much light for the 20 gallon or the 10 gallon? I'm a little intimidated by CO2 right now. Would Flourish Excel get me by until I can do some more research on CO2?

Trickerie- I'm not opposed to adding ferts. I haven't decided on a method yet, but knew that I would need to. The SafeTSorb was the best option available to me locally without going with dirt. I don't have a list yet, but I am planning on using the plant list on the sticky as a reference. I know the LFS have 3-4 of the species on that list available. I don't really want to add too different many species to start any way. I will probably stick with small Anubias, Java Fern, some form of Crypt, and some form of moss to start.

It is a betta and a ram in the same tank. I was very concerned, and have been watching it closesly. I have to honestly say that it is one well behaved betta. He pretty much leaves everyone alone. I've been watching closely. At the first sign of aggressiveness or fin damage and he's out of there. The ram gets harrassed more by the Molly than anything else. No nipping though.

Not sure about two of your plants in the upper tank, the one on the far right I have never seen before and the one on the middle left looks like mondo grass, if so its not a true aquatic plant and may not last very long submerged.

Hoppy- you think that is too much light for the 20 gallon or the 10 gallon? I'm a little intimidated by CO2 right now. Would Flourish Excel get me by until I can do some more research on CO2?

Trickerie- I'm not opposed to adding ferts. I haven't decided on a method yet, but knew that I would need to. The SafeTSorb was the best option available to me locally without going with dirt. I don't have a list yet, but I am planning on using the plant list on the sticky as a reference. I know the LFS have 3-4 of the species on that list available. I don't really want to add too different many species to start any way. I will probably stick with small Anubias, Java Fern, some form of Crypt, and some form of moss to start.

It is a betta and a ram in the same tank. I was very concerned, and have been watching it closesly. I have to honestly say that it is one well behaved betta. He pretty much leaves everyone alone. I've been watching closely. At the first sign of aggressiveness or fin damage and he's out of there. The ram gets harrassed more by the Molly than anything else. No nipping though.

Lol yes, but fortunately you don't have a breeding pair of rams in there. If so, id be highly concerned for the safety of the molly and betta haha. Rams are fierce swimmers and can outright kill a fish if they wanted to, just watch how effortless they glide around the water. Ive seen a male ram kill a tetra in one swipe when it came too close to its breeding grounds.

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